


to a different tune

by Welcoming_Disaster



Category: Marvel (House of M), Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - House of M, Angst, Bittersweet, F/F, mindfuckery, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:09:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29528970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welcoming_Disaster/pseuds/Welcoming_Disaster
Summary: Far from home, Wanda meets a familiar face.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	to a different tune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghosthan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthan/gifts).



> han months ago i promised you house of m lesbians please have some house of m lesbians ily

The year is 2002. A young woman, cloaked in red, has just checked into one the Peninsula in Beverly Hills, one of the most luxurious hotels in the continental United States. She’s foreign royalty, and so armed guards follow her, stationed in rooms just outside her own suite. She’s here for a diplomatic mission her brother and sister are too big for, an appearance here and there that will help her father, somehow, to govern his nation.

She is alone in her bed, surrounded by pillows, the mattress feather-soft. None of this is happening — she’s a memory in a fake world, an artificial backstory she’s constructing for herself — and yet it feels so, so real. The silk under her fingers is smooth and pleasant. She can remember how she had gotten here, every step of the way, knows instinctually where everyone is, what they’re doing, can see nothing in the room out of place.

This isn’t like any of her other hallucinations.

The young woman slithers out of several layers of coats of shawls, leaving red silk spilling out behind her like a blood stain, shockingly vivid against the white bedspreads. She feels the fabric of the universe creak and moan around her, adjusting to a strange new shape, driven by a subconscious, uncontrolled whim. She shouldn’t be here, and yet she longs, so desperately for something she can’t quite describe.

She’s stifled. Her father barely allows her out of the city, but he isn’t the main issue. Pietro doesn’t let her out of his sight, fretting over his delicate, infirm, _human_ sister. Even now, hundreds of miles away, finally, briefly, away from her family, she worries about him turning up. Distance means little to him.

She knows her family are the only she can trust, the only people who wouldn’t have her dead. This knowledge lives deep, deep inside the core of her being, thrums through every fiber of the world around her. _They’d all come after you, if they could. They’d all come after you, if they knew._

Knew what? What is there to know?

They’re her only option. Some part of her remembers — _imagines_ , she tells herself, not _remembers_ — a time when this had not been the case, when freedom had been easy, when Pietro had stood by her side as an equal and not a protector.

She steps out onto the balcony, which she isn’t supposed to do. Balconies are where people get shot.

It’s a beautiful morning. She’s a little chilly without her cloak, but, as she stands, taking deep breaths of crisp morning air, the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, hitting her skin. If she stands here much longer, she’ll tan, and perhaps that’ll give away her secret.

On the street in front her balcony, people walk, leap, fly to their destinations. A trio of siblings, each with bright green, frog-like flesh and webbed fingers, seem to be rushing home from school, running circles around each other. A winged mutant boy darts down to pluck one of them out of the air and soars away with him, both of them laughing.

Above them, another figure watches, hanging still in air. It’s the figure of a woman in a black leotard and thigh-high boots, her yellow sash flaring out behind her and catching the sunlight. Ms. Marvel is instantly recognizable, instantly familiar. She’s the world’s best known superhero.

Wanda’s breath catches. Unable to help herself, she straightens up and waves her arms in the air. _Over here_ , she thinks, without speaking aloud, _look at me. Please, God, look at me_.

Remarkably, despite the distance between them, Ms. Marvel turns to look at her, and then glides down, slowly, towards the balcony. It could be, thinks Wanda, that the red of her dress had made her particularly noticeable. It could be that the other woman is feeling whatever it is that she is.

Mesmerized, Wanda watches her descend. It should look ridiculous for a human person to hang in the air like this, but Ms. Marvel somehow makes it graceful, athletic.

Up close, Ms. Marvel is gorgeous. Her hair, light and shiny, flares out around her face like a halo. She has a strong chin, long, dark brown eyelashes, slightly chapped pink lips. She’s not wearing makeup. _She doesn’t usually,_ Wanda’s brain supplies, _not unless it’s a press appearance._

Wanda can’t remember the woman’s name, but she’s suddenly struck dumb by an imagined memory of knowing her, of sharing a house with her, sharing a team with her, of bumping elbows over a long, heavy mahogany table, of helping her smooth out gift wrap — she’s awful at wrapping, Wanda is suddenly convinced — of sitting side by side to dangle their feel in the chlorinated water of a pool. She can feel a quiet fear, a helplessness, the thought, _she’s drinking again,_ can see Carol — Ms. Marvel was always Carol, of course, how had she forgotten,— hunched over on the kitchen floor in the mansion, her hands threaded through her hair, tugging at the blond waves, greasy now. If she thinks too hard, if she forces her mind back onto the memory, as slippery as an eel and impossible on to, maybe she can—

“Can I help you, ma’am?” Carol asks, all polite helpfulness, her voice sounding exactly like a superhero’s voice should. She loves this, Wanda realizes. If she could choose a life for herself, it would always be this one.

 _Take me away,_ Wanda wants to say, _Take me home. I can’t stand it here, not even if it’s the only way to live, not even for the kids—_

What kids? She’s never had kids. She won’t have the boys for years.

“I just thought I recognized you,” she says, sheepish.

“Well, yeah,” Carol says, sitting down on the edge of the balcony, her black thigh high boots catching the light. She sounds slightly amused.“Most people do.”

“No,” says Wanda, “as in, we’ve met before.”

Carol studies her, a quick up and down followed by careful, assessing eyes on her face. Wanda is suddenly a little self conscious, grateful she’s stopped to reapply her mascara, to brush concealer into the circles under her eyes.

“Oh,” she says, clearly a little bit off balance, “yeah, huh, you know what, I think we have. Was it, uh—“

She can’t bring forth the name, though, frowning down at the railing.

“Wanda,” Wanda supplies.

“Wanda!” Carol repeats, “Carol.”

“Yes,” Wanda says, “Yes, Carol, I know. Are you busy? You could come in.”

The next thing she knows, Carol is sitting at the island little kitchenette in Wanda’s hotel room, and Wanda is making her tea.

It’s strange, to see her here. She smells like cold, fresh outside air, out of place in Wanda’s stuffy, warm room. She’s taller than Wanda, broader than her in the shoulders. When she moves, Wanda can’t help watching the muscle in her arms, over her body, the perfect form of her long, long legs. The leotard hides nothing.

Again, a half-formed, imagined memory comes to her, so clear she can taste it, smell it, feel it over her skin. In it, she’s sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling her into the cold chlorinated water, watching Carol and Jennifer bat a ball around a volleyball. Carol’s one piece swimsuit hides nothing, and Wanda’s eyes, inappropriately, stray onto the black and gold fabric clinging to her breasts. She feels something stirring in her gut, something more forbidden, perhaps, than even loving a robot.

Carol says something. The tea has boiled, and Wanda realizes that she’s paused, frozen up, staring down at Carol’s chest.

Ah.

“What was that?” She asks, trying to salvage the situation.

“I said, did we meet in New York?” Carol asks, “Bit more than a year ago, some kind of… mutant thing, I was invited to. A lot of—“

She gestures around the room, probably to indicate the general appearance of wealth and status.

“Oh,” Wanda says. She’s surprised to find out they had. Had there been a pool? Had there been another life? “Yes. The Annual Liberation Day party. I was there with my brother.”

She dangles a tea bag into hot water, in, then out. In, then out. Stop trying to catch fish, her father would say.

“Here,” she says, “earl grey.”

“Thanks,” Carol replies, taking it. “I don’t remember that night so well.”

Concern, far too sharp and intense, flares in Wanda’s gut. She feels like she’s failed Carol somehow, slipped up, though this can have nothing to do with her. “Were you drinking?”

“Oh,” Carol says, caught off guard, “sure, yeah. It was a party.”

 _She won’t lose control of it,_ Wanda tells herself, _Not unless her life goes off the rails again. She used to drink without issue, didn’t she?_

She doesn’t know when she’s thinking about. She can’t tell how she knows this.

 _If she’s happy,_ She thinks, _if she’s in control, if she’s satisfied…_

“Are you alright, Carol?” She asks, her voice quiet, serious.

Carol shifts in her seat and meets her eye. She’s overstepped, Wanda knows, and Carol is wondering who the hell she is to ask, to care. Wanda sees an expression fly over her face, the kind that says she’s about to cut straight to the chase. She’s seen this look before, mostly on the battlefield.

“Did we sleep together?” Carol asks. “At that party.”

Another image flashes in Wanda’s mind, crisper and vivid than the ones before it, hyperreal. The two of them are stretched out the same hammock, in the sun, Carol’s skin still chilled from the swimming pool, Carol’s hair soaking the fabric, Carol’s cheeks red with what will be sunburn the next day. Their bodies are pressed up together in a straight line from shoulder to toe, cocooned on each side by the heavy rough fabric of the hammock. Their breasts brush against each other, nipple-to-nipple, Carol’s wet swimsuit leaving dark spots over Wanda’s dry one. Carol’s hand lays on Wanda’s hip, her water-puckered fingers tracking circles just over the strap of her bikini bottom.

This is female friendship, Wanda is telling herself, in America. She’s new to having female friends. Maybe it’s like this everywhere.

Later, with Carol in her bed, Carol’s still-damp hair brushing sending gooseflesh up her thighs, Carol’s index finger pushing skillfully into her, Carol’s tongue over her clit, sending jolts of strange, overexposed pleasure up her spine, she’ll abandon that thought.

That hadn’t been New York. The not-memory is charged with a sort of easy, comfortable affection that had never a part of her life, the feeling of a home where she did not walk on eggshells, of a family that didn’t make her feel stressed and _wrong_ and hunted all the time, of the kind of love that was fun and didn’t leave her tired at the end of the day.

Carol’s still watching her, her eyes trained intently on her face, her eyebrows knit together.

“Not at the party,” Wanda says, “no.”

Carol stands. The heels give her almost four inches on Wanda, who suddenly feels small, overwhelmed, out of place.

“Where do I know you from?” Carol demands, “How did we—?”

She trails off, unsure exactly what they’d done.

Wanda takes a step back. She realizes, suddenly, that she’s terrified. This can’t happen. She can trust no one but her family.

 _She’d have you dead,_ something that sounds like her brother’s voice whispers in her ear, _she’d never understand, if she knew. None of them would. We’re the only people who are safe._

The universe groans and creaks around her like the stairs in the mansion on a damp night, like an old wooden boat in the wind. She should have never done this. She should have never been here. She should have known better than to run, again.

She only has time to register Carol’s wide-eyed look of surprise before the world shifts and twists around them, engulfed by a bright, bright light. Something pulses through Wanda’s veins, white hot and powerful, and she’s finally, finally not small, not helpless, not human, and she could, she could cry, she wants to be here, stay here, forever, wants to go home and desperately knows she must, wants to lay forever in a hammock by the mansion that had burned down because of her, wants Vision and _home_ and the kids, wants noise and clatter and Avengers in the halls, wants—

Silence.

Quiet.

Peace.

No more of this, please, no more.

The year is 2002. A young woman, cloaked in red, lays on the silk sheets in her bed in Genosha. Her brother and sister have gone to California for a diplomatic mission, an appearance here and there that will help her father, somehow, to govern his nation.

She doesn’t leave the palace. It’s better this way.


End file.
